Forget New York drawl, get New Delhi accent!

Sep 21, 2011

Rakesh Krishnan Simha

Drawing by Niyaz Karim

With an English-speaking population that outnumbers the US and Britain combined and new Indian English words flooding the lexicon, India could end up re-scripting the rules on how the language is spoken and written worldwide.

Web 2.0 is the one millionth word in the
English language. According to the Global Language Monitor in Texas, US, the
word refers to the second generation of the World Wide Web. For a word to
officially enter the lexicon, it has to be used in books or on the internet 25,000
times.

However, not many know the Hindi word ‘Jai
Ho’ (Be Victorious) is the 999,999th word. This is no freakish chance; the
explosion of words in the English language reflects the extraordinary rate of
borrowings from foreign languages, including Indian.

Word leaders

English 1,000,000

Mandarin 500,000

Japanese 232,000

Spanish 225,000

Russian 195,000

German 185,000

Hindi 120,000

French 100,000

Toki Pona 197

Source: Global Language Monitor

English is the language that Shakespeare
used and George W. Bush abused. Now Indians are giving it their own flavour.
Professor David Crystal, one of the world's foremost linguists, says people
will effectively have to learn two varieties of the language – one spoken in
their home country, and a new kind of Standard English which can be
internationally understood. The English spoken in countries with
rapidly-booming economies, such as India, will increasingly influence this
global standard, he says.

“In
future, users of global Standard English might replace the British
English ‘I think it's going to rain', with the Indian English, 'I am thinking it's going to rain," argues Crystal, the honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor.

“In language, numbers count. There are more
people speaking English in India than in the rest of the native
English-speaking world combined. Even now, if you ring a call centre, often
it's an Indian voice you hear at the end of the phone. As the Indian economy
grows, so will the influence of Indian English,” he says.

“There, people tend to use the present
continuous where we would use the present simple. For example, where we would
say: ‘I think, I feel, I see,’ a speaker of Indian English might say: ‘I am
thinking, I am feeling, I am seeing’. This way of speaking could easily become
sexy and part of global Standard English.”

Sexy or not, the sheer weight of numbers is
moving the odds in India's favour. At least 600 million Indians are able to
read and write English, and the rest are following fast. Fuelled by a throbbing
economy and a rapidly growing higher education sector (again, where the medium
of discourse is – unfortunately or otherwise, whichever way you look at it –
largely English), a bold new dialect is taking shape in India, giving tough
competition to the ‘proper’ British.

For this growing Indian English dialect, or
Hinglish, as it is sometimes called, to find acceptance by the rest of the
world, India first has to become a world player. Linguistic status comes from
economic and cultural leadership and India is showing promise that its global
profile will only grow in decades to come.

For many people outside India, the first
port of call for contact with Indians is the call centre. However, these are of
minor significance now as the country has moved up the value chain. There is a
lot more happening which is moving the global compass in India’s direction. For
instance, much of the world's software is written here; many of the global car
companies get their cars designed in engineering hubs based in Bangalore; the
world's leading financial companies offshore their work to MBAs and chartered
accountants in Mumbai; Reuters has moved its editing operations to India; and
Indian lawyers do legal research overnight so American lawyers have their case
ready to argue in US courtrooms the following morning.

There’s more. According to Julian Assange,
Indians form the largest group of financial contributors to Wikipedia; daily
texting exceeds the numbers in the UK and US; 2.5 billion people watch Indian
movies compared with 1.5 billion who prefer Hollywood (Mithun Chakraborty’s
popularity among Russian baby boomers remains unchallenged) and Indian movies
are increasingly catering to an international market.

Clearly, if China is the world’s shop
floor, India is becoming its think tank.

As Crystal says, India has a unique
position in the English-speaking world. It is a linguistic bridge between the
major first-language dialects of the world, such as British and American
English, and the major foreign-language varieties, such as those emerging in
China and Japan. China is the closest competitor for the English-speaking
record with some 220 million speakers of English, but China does not have the
English linguistic environment seen in India; nor does it have the strength of
linguistic tradition that provides continuities with the rest of the
English-speaking world.

Plus, there is history. Every Indian knows
about the massive British loot (again, a Hindi word) from India, but less well
known is the large number of words from Indian languages that entered English.

The evolution of a language can be
influenced by any number of factors. Consequently, not even the supercomputers
at Global Language Monitor’s Texas labs can predict what shape Indians will
give English in the future. However, one thing is abundantly clear: in the 21st
century the New Delhi drawl rather than the New York twang will be rolling off
people’s tongues.

And if you are still here, greenwashing is
the 999,992nd word to enter the English lexicon, and is defined as the rebranding
of an old, often inferior, product. Now, that’s handy to describe the Gandhis.